"… And although in Graz," Kepler was saying, "I had many persons of influence on my side, even the Jesuits, yes, it was to no avail, the authorities continued to hound me without mercy, and would have me renounce my faith. You will not believe it, sir, I was forced to pay a fine of ten florins for the privilege, the privilege, mark you, of burying my poor children by the Lutheran rite."
Tycho stirred and dealt his moustaches a downward thrust of forefinger and thumb. Kepler with plaintive gaze stooped lower in his chair, as if the yoke of that finger and thumb had descended upon his thin neck.
"What is your philosophy, sir?" the Dane asked.
Italian oranges throbbed in a pewter bowl on the table between them. Kepler had not seen oranges before. Blazoned, big with ripeness, they were uncanny in their tense inexorable thereness.
"I hold the world to be a manifestation of the possibility of order," he said. Was this another fragment out of that morning's dream? Tycho Brahe was looking at him again, stonily. "That is," Kepler hastened, "I espouse the natural philosophy." He wished he had dressed differently. The ruff especially he regretted. He had intended it to make an impression, but it was too tight. His borrowed hat languished on the floor at his feet, another brave but ill-judged flourish, with a dent in the crown where he had inadvertently stepped on it. Tycho, considering a far corner of the ceiling, said:
"When I came first to Bohemia, the Emperor lodged us in Prague at the house of the late Vice Chancellor Curtius, where the infernal ringing of bells from the Capuchin monastery nearby was a torment night and day. " He shrugged. "One has always to contend with disturbance."
Kepler nodded gravely. Bells, yes: bells indeed would seriously disturb the concentration, though not half so seriously, he fancied, as the cries of one's children dying in agony. They had, he and this Dane, much to learn about each other. He glanced around with a smile, admiring and envious. "But here, of course…?" The wall by which they sat was almost all a vast arched window of many leaded panes, that gave on to a prospect of vines and pasture lands rolling away into a blue pellucid distance. Winter sunlight blazed upon the Iser.
"The Emperor refers to Benatek as a castle," Tycho Brahe said, "but it is hardly that. I am making extensive alterations and enlargements; I intend that here will be my Bohemian Uraniborg. One is frustrated though at every turn. His majesty is sympathetic, but he cannot attend in person to every detail. The manager of the crown estates hereabouts, with whom I must chiefly deal, is not so well disposed towards me as I would wish. Mühlstein he is called, Kaspar von Mühlstein…" darkly measuring the name as a hangman would a neck. "I think he is a Jew."
A noontide bell clanged without, and the Dane-wanted his breakfast. A servant brought in hot bread wrapped in napkins, and a jug from which he filled their cups with a steaming blackish stuff. Kepler peered at it and Tycho said: "You do not know this brew? It comes from Araby. I find it sharpens the brain wonderfully." It was casually said, but Kepler knew he was meant to be impressed. He drank, and smacked his lips appreciatively, and Tycho for the first time smiled. "You must forgive me, Herr Kepler, that I did not come myself to greet you on your arrival in Bohemia. As I mentioned in my letter, I seldom go to Prague, unless it is to call upon the Emperor; and besides, the opposition at this time of Mars and Jupiter, as you will appreciate, encouraged me not to interrupt my work. However, I trust you will understand that I receive you now less as a guest than as a friend and colleague. "
This little speech, despite its seeming warmth, left them both obscurely dissatisfied. Tycho, about to proceed, instead looked sulkily away, to the window and the winter day outside. The servant knelt before the tiled stove feeding pine logs to the flames. The fellow had a cropped head and meaty hands, and raw red feet stuck into wooden clogs. Kepler sighed. He was, he realised, hopelessly of that class which notices the state of servants' feet. He drank more of the Arabian brew. It did clear the head, but it seemed also, alarmingly, to be giving him the shakes. He feared his fever was coming on again. It had dogged him now for six months and more, and led him, in grey dawn hours, to believe he was consumptive. Still, he appeared to be putting on fat: this cursed ruff was choking him.
Tycho Brahe turned back and, looking at him hard, asked: "You work the metals?"
"Metals…?" faintly. The Dane had produced a small lacquered ointment box, and was applying a dab of aromatic salve to the flesh surrounding the false bridge of silver and gold alloy set into his damaged nose, where as a young man he had been disfigured in a duel. Kepler stared. Was he to be asked perhaps to fashion a new and finer organ to adorn the Dane's great face? He was relieved when Tycho, with a trace of irritation, said:
"I mean the alembic and so forth. You claimed to be a natural philosopher, did you not?" He had an unsettling way of ranging back and forth in his talk, as if the subjects were marked on the counters of a game which he was idly playing in his head.
"No no, alchemy is not, I am not-"
"But you make horoscopes."
"Yes, that is, when I-"
"For payment?"
"Well, yes. "He had begun to stammer. He felt he was being forced to confess to an essential meanness of spirit. Shaken, he gathered himself for a counter-move, but Tycho abruptly shifted the direction of play again.
"Your writings are of great interest. I have read your Mysterium cosmographicum with attention. I did not agree with the method, of course, but the conclusions reached I found… significant."
Kepler swallowed. "You are too kind."
"The flaw, I would suggest, is that you have based your theories upon the Copernican system."
Instead of on yours, that is. Well, at least they were touching on the real matter now. Kepler, his fists clenched in his lap to stop them trembling, sought feverishly for the best means of proceeding at once to the essential question. He found himself, to his annoyance, hesitating. He did not trust Tycho Brahe. The man was altogether too still and circumspect, like a species of large lazy predator hunting motionless from the sprung trap of his lair. (Yet he was, in his way, a great astronomer. That was reassuring. Kepler believed in the brotherhood of science.) And besides, what was the essential question? He was seeking more than mere accommodation for himself and his family at Benatek. Life to him was a kind of miraculous being in itself, almost a living organism, of wonderful complexity and grace, but racked by a chronic wasting fever; he wished from Benatek and its master the granting of a perfect order and peace in which he might learn to contain his life, to still its fevered thrashings and set it to dancing the grave dance. Now, as he brooded in quiet dismay on these confusions, the moment eluded him. Tycho, pushing away the picked bones of his breakfast, began to rise. "Shall we see you at dinner, Herr Kepler?"
"But!…" The astronomer was scrabbling for his hat under the table.
"You will meet some other of my assistants then, and we can discuss a redistribution of tasks, now that we are one more. I had thought of setting you the lunar orbit. However, we must first consult my man Christian Longberg, who, as you will of course understand, has a say in these matters." They made a slow exit from the room. Tycho did not so much walk as sail, a stately ship. Kepler, pale, twisted the hat-brim in his trembling fingers. This was all mad. Friend and colleague indeed! He was being treated as if he were a raw apprentice. In the corridor Tycho Brahe bade him an absentminded farewell and cruised away. Frau Barbara was waiting for him in their rooms. She had an air always of seeming cruelly neglected, by his presence no less than by his absence. Sorrowing and expectant, she asked: "Well?"
Kepler selected a look of smiling abstraction and tested it gingerly. "Hmm?"